• Roslyn Steer – Still Moving

    August 6, 2015 - By 

    Roslyn Steer is a member of Morning Veils, who specialise in “forgotten folk”. She is also a PhD student at NUI Maynooth, writing a thesis on screaming at the department of music. These two interests come together on her solo release Still Moving, a tape for her own label KantCope (a delightful play on words). Side One is taken up fully by the title track, a half-hour meandering body of work that shifts between chilling spoken word, drawn-out, lilting harmonica and twisted church bells that meet rugged guitar distortion. A huge entity, its breadth and ambition is matched by its…

  • Albert Hammond Jr. – Momentary Masters

    August 4, 2015 - By 

    Albert Hammond Jr. is a man whose solo work is put under severe levels of scrutiny because of his musical pedigree: son and namesake of a highly distinguished and decorated musician, and a key figure in the success of one of the most influential bands of a generation – in one sense it’s a badge of honour; in another, an encumbering lineage. It’s fair to say that previous albums, although competent, haven’t quite lived up to those somewhat daunting standards. The album’s first single, ‘Born Slippy’, opens proceedings, and is very different to the now 20-year-old track from Underworld, forever synonymous with Trainspotting.  Evocative of the intro to ‘Macho Picchu’ from The Strokes’ 2011 album Angles, it’s a nod to seminal New York insouciant…

  • Stirrings Still @ Samuel Beckett Happy Days Festival

    August 3, 2015 - By 

    Rain pours steadily and the water lies in pools on the road, shooting up like silver ribbons as the bus moves through the Fermanagh countryside. The hills of Donegal flank the route to the left. They say that Lough Erne lies in Fermanagh half the year, while Fermanagh lies in Lough Erne the other half; no matter, the wet July weather can’t dampen the enthusiasm of the Samuel Beckett fans heading to a secret destination to see a theatrical performance of the playwright’s final prose piece, Stirrings Still. The secret locations for performances have become a popular facet of the…

  • Strange Brew Summer Shindig #11 @ Roisin Dubh, Galway

    August 3, 2015 - By 

    It’s still relatively early in the evening on the Thursday of the Galway Races, July 30. I’m walking through the town which is flooded will ill-fitting suits and headwear that ranges from patch caps to multi-coloured shapes that defy the laws of physics. It’s mayhem. It’s loud. There’s a man with curry sauce all over his shirt shouting at a seagull and there’s a bunch of lads singing (read: bellowing) ‘Don’t Look Back in Anger’. Despite the sense of mania of it all, it’s hard to not find it all just to be a lot of fun. People have come in…

  • Lianne La Havas – Blood

    August 3, 2015 - By 

    For her second album, Lianne La Havas has traded the acoustic settings of her 2012 debut, Is Your Love Big Enough?, for a lusher, summery sound. Inspired, La Havas says, by her Jamaican and Greek heritage, the album fairly shimmers with plush, melodic soul numbers, usually of the most laid-back variety. At the same time, there’s a refined musical intelligence at work across the album that keeps the attention throughout – not least in La Havas’ expertly judged vocal delivery. While co-producers Di Genius (son of veteran reggae artist Freddie McGregor), Paul Epworth and Jamie Lidell all put in top-drawer…

  • Love & Mercy

    July 30, 2015 - By 

    The fidelity that musical biopics tend to have towards the chronology of public record – especially when the subject or their families are still alive, and liable to kick up a fuss over films playing fast and loose with their story – makes it difficult to know what parts to keep and what do ditch. Live fast, die young stories are good because you can fit everything in to a tight arc of glamourous decline. Complex, sprawling careers are more challenging, but can be can be reduced to a single period for convenience. Others take a more experimental approach, like Todd…

  • Lisa Dwan @ Samuel Beckett Happy Days Festival

    July 28, 2015 - By 

    Talks related to Samuel Beckett are an integral feature of the Happy Days Enniskillen International Beckett Festival. This year, the inaugural Billie Whitelaw Memorial Lecture in the Southwest College commemorated the late Beckett actress who passed away in December 2014. Lisa Dwan, in a very real sense the heir to Whitelaw, had the honour of delivering the first Billie Whitelaw Memorial Lecture and gave a talk every bit as captivating as the interpretations of Beckett’s plays that have won her unreserved international acclaim. In introducing Dwan, the festival’s Deputy Artistic Director Liam Browne quoted a New York Times review of…

  • The Flag – Heat Waves

    July 28, 2015 - By 

    One-man racket-making specialist Ted McGrath has hit on to a nice niche here. With The Flag’s Heat Waves, he’s happened onto this strange electronic hybrid. Swathes of eclectic influences, styles and instrumentation all come together in this intriguing amalgamation. Sensations of Girl Band, The KLF and Young Fathers all come to mind as the album takes you on its rather spritely journey. It’s sharp, absorbing and more often than not quite compelling. There are issues with its layout and construction, however, that hurt the experience overall. The proceedings start well with the titular ‘Heat Waves’, this brooding creeping creature which…

  • True Story

    July 28, 2015 - By 

    The last time James Franco and Jonah Hill were in a movie together, 2013’s This is the End, Hill got a Satanic cock up the ass and Franco was munched to death by self-appointed cannibal king Danny McBride. Franco and Hill trade up in the respectability index for True Story, a flat cat-and-mouse two-hander based on the ‘true story’ of Christian Longo, wanted by the FBI in 2002 for the murder of his family, and the disgraced journalist who wrote a book about him. Hill is Michael Finkel, an ambitious New York Times reporter who is fired for embellishing a cover story on modern slavery and…

  • Station to Station

    July 27, 2015 - By 

    Doug Aitken’s Station To Station – a collagist multimedia project spanning numerous major US cities and “off-the-grid” locations – is an unusual experience. Recorded over a three-week, four-thousand mile trip in late 2013, Aitken’s film encapsulates all manner of experiences and ethea in relation to being on the road in a contemporary America. Filmed on-board and around a customised, neon-coated train, and through a series of live “happenings”, Station To Station is at once frenetic and contemplative, not only in its content, but also its kaleidoscopic structure. Collaborators range from world-renowned musicians (Patti Smith, Jackson Browne, Beck), to experimental artists…